Unusual Picks/plectrum

Subject: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: Raggytash
Date: 29 Jun 22 - 08:21 AM

Back in the 70/80's I used to buy an unusual pick/plectrum.

It was basically two plecks moulded together with a gap of about 2mm between the two blades.

It effectively made a 6 string guitar sound vaguely like a 12 string guitar.

Does anyone know if they are still produced anywhere, if if so how can I get a supply.

Cheers

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 29 Jun 22 - 08:41 AM

I haven't seen the picks you mentioned in years but I suspect that three picks, a pair of scissors, and some supper glue and you could make a pick like you describe fairly quickly. This would give you the opportunity to experiment with sounds. As a silversmith I am perhaps more adventurous with this stuff because I have the components in front of me on a daily basis. So I will give it a try myself.

I make flat picks out of horn. They are heavier and less slippery and I like the way they sound.

I make my own finger picks out of sterling and the fit a little better than the Dunlop .025's I used for years.

I think it's more a vanity thing but they both do work well.

Don

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: Raggytash
Date: 29 Jun 22 - 08:57 AM

Hmmm thats given me something to think about, two picks and a small washer glued together may work .................

Thanks Don

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Don
Date: 29 Jun 22 - 09:22 AM

Give 'er a go Rags.

D

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 29 Jun 22 - 09:32 AM

On the basis of the Golden Rule of Guitar-Ownership, which is that the optimum number of guitars a person should own = one more than he/she already owns, I’d stop faffing around glueing stuff together, and just buy the goddam 12-string! ;-) :-)

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 29 Jun 22 - 09:39 AM

You’re probably looking for a Dunlop “Strummer”, strum- rose or SR pick. They’re clearly not produced any more but they’re sometimes available second hand.

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 29 Jun 22 - 09:31 PM

I have known folk to construct a pick by adding a more flexable piece from a bleach bottle handle.

You might take a look at ...

https://www.tinaspicks.com

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

. Very Interesting

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: Raggytash
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 06:14 AM

The type I am on about in slap bang in the middle of the headline photograph Gargoyle (the pale green one)and in your unusually shaped picks you have it down aas a "triplet"

I'd love to be able to but some of them from somewhere.

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 07:01 AM

That’s not the Dunlop one I mentioned.

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 07:04 AM

There are several options Here

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: Raggytash
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 07:33 AM

Ray, if you scroll furture down the page that you posted you will find one pick entitled "triplet" I would love to find a source of these.

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 11:10 AM

Don’t remember ever seeing them but a bit of searching suggests that they haven’t been seen since the 80s - I’d been playing guitar for 20 years by then!

No idea where you’d find one today and, personally, I have no need/desire to own one but somebody probably has one mouldering away somewhere.

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 30 Jun 22 - 12:05 PM

The last post was I.

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 01 Jul 22 - 10:59 AM

I play Middle Eastern strings (oud, cumbus). The classic kind of plectrum for the oud was the core of an eagle pinion feather soaked in olive oil for six months. Others were made of tortoise shell or buffalo horn. You can buy various plastic imitations but I prefer to make my own by polishing short strips of the kind of heavy duty strapping they use for bundling paving slabs, timber and pipes. There are several different types, whenever I pass a building site skip I look to see what they've got. There's a picture here.

My cumbus page

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 01 Jul 22 - 03:25 PM

Jack, thanks for your post. I'm not a musician so I don't know why I looked at this thread but I find your info on the cumbus fascinating. In 40 years of visiting Greece I've heard many instruments: bouzouki, guitar, baglama, oud, lyra, fiddle, bagpipes but not cumbus. I am a fan of rembetika, especially Vamvakakis and Bellou and didn't know some bands included cumbus. I now think back to a holiday in Patmos many years ago. We had had a meal in the town and then a free outdoor classical concert (western style orchestra with added bouzouki) and were walking back in the dark to our apartment outide the town. We passed a house to hear a man sitting on the pesoula under his veranda playing what I assumed was a banjo. Perhaps it was a cumbus. Any way thanks for alerting me to this ( I love unusual instruments) . i will look out for them in future!
RtS

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Jul 22 - 08:44 PM

I've just inherited the CD and cassette collection of Pav Verity, who was maybe the UK's most fanatical rebetica buff. There are several pictures of the cümbüş being played, but I haven't heard it on any track yet. Timing might have been bad. They were invented just before the population exchanges, and rebetis in Greece were skunt and marginalized, wouldn't often have had the means to import new instruments from Turkey.

I've also got a baglamas of Pav's. Fun little thing. I am being thoroughly unauthentic and playing it with a cümbüş pick. I just don't see the point of tensing myself up and raising my blood pressure by gripping a triangular pick like grim death.

BTW "Ta zilliarika sou matia" is a fantastic cümbüş tune.

Subject: RE: Unusual Picks/plectrum
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 04 Jul 22 - 03:29 PM

So, I made myself a twin pleck today, not quite as I remember them but interesting especially on my 12 string which I have tuned in DADGAD.

I'll try again though using different, and possibly thinner, plecks.